


Beware of Outdoor Furniture

by Misty_Floros



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Crack, F/F, Getting Together, POV Outsider, POV Park Bench, She/Her Pronouns for Aziraphale (Good Omens), She/Her Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24358021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misty_Floros/pseuds/Misty_Floros
Summary: According to available research, wooden park benches aren’t sentient. Apparently, scientists haven’t encountered a certain specimen located by St James’ Park Lake yet.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 63





	Beware of Outdoor Furniture

According to available research, wooden park benches aren’t sentient. Apparently, scientists haven’t encountered a certain specimen located by St James’ Park Lake yet.

At first glance, it’s a completely innocuous bench made of western red cedar wood, standing in line with a handful of identical benches flanking an asphalt path. Its singularity lies out of not only human sight, but also that of inattentive inhuman entities.

Although Crowley might possess extraordinary imaginative skills for a demon, she doesn’t bother to pick a different bench to miraculously vacate every time she and Aziraphale want to sit down somewhere in the park, and over the years, this bench has become more or less their place.

Its slats have discoloured to a faded grey over the thirty years which have passed since the wood was obtained somewhere near the western coast of North America. Its age is the source of its extraordinary condition – you try accommodating the arses of an ethereal and an occult being for thirty years and not grow sentient from it.

It’s a tough life, being a sentient bench. It has lost count of how many times a pigeon has shat on it as well as the number of times someone has dropped a bit of ice-cream or other sticky food on it. The chewing gums stuck to its underside really ruffle its grain, and it has had to patiently learn to focus elsewhere whenever a particularly enthusiastic couple decide to snog on it by sunset.

The demon and the angel, though, they give it the most grief.

They’re both afflicted with a case of pining so tragic that the bench’s cedar wood has started turning into pine. No self-respecting outdoor furniture would care to turn into pine, so maintaining the status quo has become a matter of survival.

It’s a stroke of luck that the bench has, apart from sentiency, also gained shape-shifting abilities. Therefore, the course of action is clearer than the water in St James’ Park Lake (which isn’t saying all that much, but having been stuck in the same place its whole life, the bench’s simile-making abilities are somewhat lacking).

Currently, a student is sitting on it, staring into their textbook and enjoying the afternoon sun. They are suddenly overcome with an overwhelming urge to go and buy a cup of coffee, and the bench knows who is about to arrive. It shrinks itself by a few tentative centimetres.

A minute after the student’s departure, two entities ensconce themselves on its surface. The angel has sat down primly as always on its right side, and the demon has plopped down on the left. As always, the demon proceeds to sprawl her limbs all over the space between them in her usual cowardly pursuit of encroaching upon the angel’s space without actually sitting close to her. Unwitting park-goers might mistake the posture for an arrogant effort to occupy as much space as possible, but the bench isn’t deceived.

They remain there for an hour, during which another small part of the bench turns into pine. Clearly, a more radical approach is required.

It takes them two weeks to turn up again. Although the bench is a quarter of a metre shorter than before, they don’t seem to pay it much heed. The result is that the demon’s sitting posture is starting to look a bit less like she’s passive-aggressively threatening the passers-by, and she has foregone her habit of stretching her arm out on top of the backrest.

The next time, the park bench is a good chunk shorter. The demon sits down and, with knit eyebrows, wonders, “Is this our bench?”

“I’m quite sure it is,” the angel responds.

“Hm. Doesn’t it seem shorter than before to you?”

The demon shifts further apart from the angel, leaning against the armrest. The bench wants to burst into splinters.

The angel contemplates the backrest. “Now that you mention it, it does. Anyway, as I was saying, _Penguin Island_ isn’t really that bad. It certainly isn’t as blasphemous as…”

The demon’s attention is once again entirely directed at the angel, and mysterious shrinking of the bench remains further unaddressed.

A couple of weeks later, the bench knows it has overdone it. It would have been better to shrink gradually after they noticed last time, but the feeling of the pine spreading through its legs made it panic.

“Am I hallucinating or has the bench really shrunk?” the demon wonders, standing in front of it.

“Well, perhaps it has been replaced?” the angel suggests.

“Let’s find another.”

“No,” the angel says, perhaps a tad hurriedly. “I’m certain we can fit comfortably on it. I like this spot.”

The angel seats herself. The demon shrugs and follows; she has to sit decently in order for their legs not to touch, and she looks uncomfortable. “It’s not even a bench, more like a wide chair,” she grouses. Offended, the bench splinters the part of the armrest where the demon is resting her left hand.

The demon hisses, lifting her hand and inspecting it. She turns her gaze back to the bench and stares. The bench stares back.

The bench feels the exact moment it clicks in her brain. “You little…” the occult being mutters.

“Is something the matter, dear?” the angel inquires worriedly.

“Uh, no. Just a splinter.” The demon gestures at the injured hand with the other. “Nothing I can’t–“

“Oh, let me,” the angel interrupts.

The demon contemplates her for a split second, the longing in her eyes concealed by the sunglasses which are starting to look ridiculous as the afternoon gives way to evening. She puts her hand in the angel’s left one, and the angel miracles the thin cedar fragment away.

“Thanks, angel,” the demon says and leaves her hand in the angel’s.

They remain silent and the bench’s outermost plank turns into pine at an alarming speed. _Bloody hell_ , it thinks, and shrinks itself on the side the demon is occupying, which makes the armrest dig into the occult entity’s side.

Said entity scoots closer to the angel, which results in her corporeal form’s thigh pressing against the angel’s corporeal form’s.

 _I really am more of a wide chair at this point_ , the bench thinks fretfully. _And at this rate, I might end up a pine chair on top of that_.

The angel’s gaze flickers sideways to meet her companion’s nervously. She lifts the demon’s hand to her lips and kisses it lightly. The occult being stares at her and then shifts closer – unprovoked by the bench this time –, putting her right arm around her shoulders. The angel responds by wrapping her own arm around the demon’s torso, and they snuggle up to one another.

After a moment of silence, the demon says, “So, are we, uh, doing things like this now?”

“If you want to.”

“Of course _I_ want to. The question is, do _you_ want to?”

“I think it’d be very nice.”

“Nice. As in, generally?”

The angel looks up at her. “What do you mean, generally?”

“I mean, you think this is a generally nice sensation? That you want to, well, try out?”

The angel frowns. “It feels nice because it’s you. I want to be close to you.”

“Oh,” the demon gapes. “I’d... I’d like that. Very much.”

The angel’s smile shines brighter than the sun currently dipping towards the horizon, and she leans her head against the demon’s shoulder.

The bench’s tissue finally stops turning into pine.

“I think this poor bench deserves recompense,” the angel says.

The demon raises her eyebrows. “What?”

“Well. It’s gone to a lot of trouble because of us. Surely, it doesn’t want to remain a garden chair for the rest of its days.”

The demon watches in puzzlement as the angel restores the bench to its original size. She even miracles away the pine and returns some colour to the greyed planks.

Their visits grow sparse after that, which is understandable. Not everyone’s interested in having a sentient bench spy on their dates. _It’s back to pigeons and chewing gum, then._


End file.
